NaNo 2: fail!

Well, as you might have noticed, this NaNo 2 thing was kind of a fail as I barely reached 12 hours of writing/working out of the 75 I had planned. But I will not give up!

March is upon us now and I intend to redo a writing challenge next month. This time, tho, I will make it a weekly challenge: I intend to work on my writing career for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week like any average Joe Worker! Which means 40 hours a week.

I will leave the little progress bar there on the side of my blog and will update it to 40 hours a week. We'll see what March will bring us :)

If I wanna make up excuses as to why this NaNo 2 has failed, I can say that the book fair ate up a lot of my time while giving me a nice sinus infection that kept me in bed for a couple of days but I guess if I wanna be totally honest, I have to admit that the problem this month was me. Like most everyone else, February hits hard on my mood and I find myself buried under feet of snow and self-doubt (a nice follow-up to my previous post, uh?). I have been trying to chase all those thoughts away but there comes a time when I just feel outnumbered! Thank goodness I have wonderful friends to pick me up in those times. ^_^

I will keep this post short for I feel mentally very drained lately. The brain is a muscle and clearly, mine is bent out of shape and has turned into a couch potato!! :P

Gotta train it a bit more everyday and whip it back into shape!

Talk to you all in March! :)

Till then, keep your thoughts happy!!!

Instant cure

For those of you who haven't noticed, I'm a very social bug. I like to be surrounded by friends and family :) Unfortunately, that is not always possible: sometimes life happens and I'm left alone. Most of the time, I can cope just fine with loneliness and I just spend some time relaxing, reading or drawing then. But sometimes, I do get lonely... and that's when I make a mistake: I log on to Facebook and scroll down the news feed. BIG mistake! Since I'm already feeling a little low, I'm seriously ill-equipped to deal with all the bad news spawning there. 

Friday, after reading about the greenhouse effect, the ebola virus, the latest idiot and cruel joke people think is funny, writers backstabbing writers, children sex slaves in Middle East, people pointing fingers and accusing everyone of not caring, some mere thousands different charity asking for money while I got about 5$ in my bank account, etc. After reading about all that, my morale was laying flat on the floor. I was feeling absolutely miserable. The thought that came with the most intent was that my career was perfectly ridiculous since I was not saving lives, fighting in the army, digging wells in Africa or researching a cure for cancer. After all, all a writer does is only making up stories and spamming the already-overcrowded artistic world with it... 

Where's the usefulness in that?

Those were my thoughts some time last Friday's afternoon... 

That's when my friend Eve showed up again and we spoke. She told me she didn't think writers had a useless job since we create adventure, a temporary escape for people to take a break from it all while being immersed in our universes. And what's more, that they can emerge better rested, with a fresh batch of energy to go through it all. And maybe we can even alter their thoughts for the better?

I think it's all very plausible :)

Then, we got to talking about styles and what I thought was an overcrowded market; that's when she linked me to a video that changed my perception of a lot of things!

It's a video of one Michele Theberge, a Canadian artist. Eve is a writer / artist and she really likes that lady's work. I'm honestly not a big fan of Theberge's paintings, but I really like the woman behind it. I actually ended up watching her entire channel that day hihi But the video that helped me the most was this one. And a sentence in it instantly cured me of my mood and doubts.

In the video, Theberge is talking about self-doubt, how they happen to every artist and how they are perfectly normal. And then she said something like "Take a pause to hear those thoughts......... And then, you are allowed to show them the door!"

That struck me.

Somehow, I had forgotten somewhere during my life that I was the sole master of my thoughts! This video reminded that to me, echoing to one of my favorite of Eleanor Roosevelt's quotes: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." If I was feeling like crap, it must have meant that I was agreeing to this?! Perhaps, these two women are right. Perhaps, I should take their advice.

So, I did.

I paused....

I heard my thoughts say stuff like "You're not that good of a writer, there are a million better than you!", "Why would anybody want to read your stuff?", "You're nobody.", etc.

Then, as my friend Rachel said: "It is scientifically proven that, when you speak aloud, your brain is forced to stop and listen to you." So I spoke aloud: "Okay, Thoughts. I hear you. I am aware of what you are saying and these fears are all mine, I know them. But Thoughts, you slow me down, you paralyze me and that is NOT what I want. So please, leave my head!"



And they did.

I know it sounds silly, like some kind of personal growth book crap. But it really did work for me and I intend to keep on doing that. :) And feel free to borrow this trick! ^_^ 

Also, as Theberge suggested, no matter if you're a writer, a painter, a singer, etc. Find yourself a journal, name it (mine is called a Vide-Tête, litterally "Head emptier") and write down in it every crap you might have in your head that is clogging the flow of the creativity river inside of you! In mine, I write stuff I have to do, stuff I must not forget, my doubts, my fears but also, my aspirations and my dreams. I empty my head of all my normal life stuff (and most of the time, I find less things to write in there than I originally thought!). Then, I am all ready to start a new creative day, no matter if what I write or paint is good or bad so long as I am having fun and liking it! ^_^ Only my OWN thoughts matter now and I am the master of it! ^_^

So, if you suffer from self-doubt like me:

1. Take a pause to hear your thoughts.
2. Make sure they know you have heard them.
3. Get rid of any thoughts you don't want. (Remember, you're the master of your thoughts and you can feel AAAANY way you want!)
4. Write down all the creativity-blocking stuff in your journal.
5. CREATE!!!!

And as a little added bonus, remember the golden rule of fighting off artist's block: "Give yourself permission to create GARBAGE!" :D

Hope that helps! ^_^

"I don't like to write!"

Last weekend, a situation arose in my home where I ended up blurting that sentence out. "I don't like to write!" ... I don't think I have to mention just how shaken I was to hear myself say that... If I didn't like to write, what was I doing writing?! If I didn't like to write, why did I make it my career?

Three days have come and gone since I've said that. Three whole days of questioning, wondering, pondering, worrying... basically, three days of going crazy. Was I on the wrong path? Should I rethink my whole career? Was it too late to change job? What the heck was I going to do if I didn't even like what I had worked on for over twelve years of my life?! What did I even like?!?!

Still, I kept on going, pushing through, gritting my teeth and doing what needed to be done but I didn't really have the heart for it anymore. I didn't care, couldn't find anything good to say and judged very harshly anything I had written up till now. To put it plainly, I was going to shelve Terra Fae! And maybe even all the other novels I was working on! Why bother if I didn't even like it, right?

That's where my friend Eve chimed in.

I had been keeping it all in for days and putting on a brave face but for some reason, it all just came pouring out right there and then! If it hadn't been one of my friends talking to me, I probably would have told anyone I came across! :P (Poor Eve: she said she had a little 15 mins break and we could chat it up a bit and then I ended up stealing her for like an hour! LOL) Anyway, we talked a lot and at the end of it, I realized that I don't hate writing per se. What I hate is only a part of writing!
Here's my little math of the day (they're not real numbers or anything. Don't quote me on it! Cause it's really just me, looking for comfort). Here's what I realized today:

For me, writing 

=

5% outlining/plotting

5% character creating

10% world-building

25% first draft writing

40% rewriting/editing

15% proofreading

So, when you look at it, I only hate 40% of the job! Some people have it a lot worse than that, right?!
Yes, now you know: I really do hate rewriting and editing. Makes me "head-desk" very often and that's when I feel like a total fool trying to get my novels published because "let's face it, I write shit!" But like Eve said: "That's good! You can see the flaws in your novel. Doesn't that mean you're getting better?" I guess I am. :)

I've then tried hard to find reasons and ways to keep going. The idea of mixing editing a "done" novel while writing a "new" one seems to work quite well, actually. And I've also got my other friend Rachel who told me I was the first writer she knew that could "write something good right from the first draft!" That's gotta mean I'm not that bad at it, uh? ^_^ 

So, if like me you think that you hate writing, maybe you just need some distance. Maybe you have to focus on the positive side. Maybe you need to stop and realize it's just a part of it you don't like...

Maybe you should do your own math, now. :)